Word: wagnerians
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...miles mostly aboard Military Air Transport Service and Air Force planes. Unpressurized cabins brought ear trouble. There was a running gag of one violinist asking his neighbor, "How did I play tonight? I couldn't hear myself." One flight, between Tokyo and Seoul, ran into a storm so Wagnerian that everyone but Director Don Gillis became violently ill. Gillis. with an oxygen tank but no mask, dashed up and down the plane spraying groaning musicians in the face with oxygen. "It may or may not have helped," he says...
...Kirsten Flagstad, 59, who interrupted her retirement to give a pair of concerts in Carnegie Hall and proved that she was still the greatest Wagnerian soprano of all. With the Symphony of the Air (formerly the NBC Symphony) under the direction of her longtime Accompanist Edwin Mc-Arthur, she sang four Wagner selections. Her voice had undeniably lost some of its freshness, but none of its security. She sang meltingly in two arias from Die Walkiire and the five Wesendonck Songs, with eloquence and sensuousness in the Love Death from Tristan. There was ringing power (even on her high...
...Star Is Born (Transcona; Warner) is a massive effort, unreeling ponderously for three hours and two minutes, to convert the Hollywood legend into something like Wagnerian musicomedy. The producers assumed astonishing risks. The story and the title were borrowed from a famed old Academy Award winner (1937) that has been shown to death on television in recent years. Furthermore, the star, Judy Garland, was a 32-year-old has-been, as infamous for temperament as she is famous for talent...
Bayreuth had not dared do Tannhäuser since Toscanini's unforgettable version 24 years ago. But brothers Wieland and Wolfgang, who will dare anything, decided the old Venusberg needed some drastic new landscaping. They hired fast-rising, Kiev-born Conductor Igor Markevitch, who had never done Wagnerian opera before, then replaced him with Germany's Joseph Keilberth. "I was not aware that anybody here was interested in tempo," huffed Markevitch at one point. "All they talk about is lighting"-and no wonder, for Director Wieland Wagner's new staging relies mainly on light effects. When...
Latest hopeful is Philadelphia-born Margaret Harshaw, 41, who is gradually shouldering a greater load of heavy Wagnerian leads. Big (5 ft. 8 in.) and strong enough to brandish a spear handily and with enough stamina to last out a four-hour opera, Soprano Harshaw seems a natural Wagnerian. She arrived at the Met in 1942 as a contralto, gradually developed her high notes until she became a full-fledged soprano. A fortnight ago, she began belting out impressive "ho-yo-to-hos" in one of Wagner's grandest roles -the helmeted goddess Briinnhilde in Die Walkure-with such...