Word: wagnerians
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...town of Bayreuth. Richard Wag ner originally built the opera house in 1876 as a setting in which his music dramas would continue to be produced ex actly as he originally directed. Through the years, the composer's family followed his wishes, using the house for productions of Wagnerian operas that adhered slavishly - and sometimes stodgily - to the Master's wishes. After World War II, Grandsons Wolfgang and Wieland broke with tradition by mounting a series of unorthodox interpretations of Wagner's works. But since the imaginative Wieland's death in 1966, the Festspielhaus has lost...
...find Sachertorte unappetizing, the waltz old-fashioned and the Danube dismally dirty. But they belong to a special class of people that Austrians consider teppert, or slightly mad. Even more than Milan, Vienna is the heart and soul of opera land, the city of melodic Mozartian fantasy and thunderous Wagnerian pageantry. Every coffee house has its tables of self-appointed critics; taxi drivers know all the gossipy details of each new backstage feud. Though impoverished Austria badly needed more practical things after World War II, one of the government's first major building activities seemed quite plausible...
...which begins with an unusually long (14 minutes) aria by Home. Rossini's lyrical melodies shimmer and flow as beautifully as a moonlit Aegean. Then, before the curtain falls on the burning, ravaged Corinth, the orchestra sweeps through a series of harsh, barbaric chords that sound almost Wagnerian...
Sweden's Birgit Nilsson is the world's reigning Wagnerian soprano. Austria's Herbert von Karajan has no superior as a conductor of the Ring cycle. Alas, two great melodies do not always pro duce a single pleasing harmony. Ever since she began singing under his demanding baton, Miss Nilsson's relation ship with the Salzburg-born maestro has become increasingly sour. Among other things, she has been irked by his insistence on unusually time-consuming rehearsals and is not too keen about his dark, brooding lighting effects, which often keep the singers in the shadows...
...heralded by the sepulchral drumbeats at the close of the Agnus Dei. The four first-class soloists (Maria Stader, soprano; Hertha Töpper, alto; John van Kesteren, tenor; Karl-Christian Kohn, bass) enter into the spirit of their conductor's classical conception: they never struggle to achieve Wagnerian eminence of tone but modestly blend into the musical architecture. The vocal texture of the Munich Bach Choir is glowingly transparent, despite its 90-odd members, even in the tumultuous contrapuntal sections...