Word: wagnerians
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Died. Lauritz Melchior, 82, golden-voiced Wagnerian tenor of New York's Metropolitan Opera for 24 seasons; of a liver ailment; in Santa Monica, Calif. (see Music...
High jinks and high Cs reigned supreme throughout the operatic career of the Danish-born heldentenor (heroic tenor). For 24 seasons (1926-50) at the Met, it was impossible to imagine Wagner without "the Great Dane." He sang in more than 1,000 Wagnerian performances-more than three times the total of any other singer-with no hint of diminution of the robust tenor that could swoop from a splendorous high to a deep, resonant...
...quarter-century he was in constant demand in the world's great opera halls, sharing the stage with such stellar Wagnerian sopranos as Kirsten Flagstad, Frida Leider, Maria Miüller and Helen Traubel. Despite his rigorous schedule, Melchior never canceled a performance, something of a landmark for temperamental opera stars. Once while he was in Götterdämmerung he developed a swollen polyp that choked him; he found that by holding his head to one side he could sing-and sing he did for three hours...
...filmmaking. There were references to movies, countless movies, everything from early Godard to Red River. Bertolucci continues this tradition of paying homage to his mentors: In The Spider's Stratagem, made in 1969, the camera lingers briefly over a poster for Robert Aldrich's Wagnerian western The Last Sunset; in Tango there is a scene aboard a barge, between Maria Schneider and Jean-Pierre Leaud, that is meant to evoke Jean Vigo's classic L'Atalante...
...conducting Wagner, though, his stately, expansive, analytic style produced performances that were ingeniously congruent with the composer's convoluted purpose. Drawn from a 1953 series of radio broadcasts from Rome in mono sound that ranges from only dim to adequate, this is a Ring that every Wagnerian will at least want to hear, and probably own as a low-priced but high-keyed contrast to excellent latter-day sets by Solti and Karajan...