Word: wagnerians
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...recurring image in popular culture--perhaps from cartoons, or maybe sitcoms--of a mother dragging her son to an opera to introduce him to "culture." Invariably, the small boy (or sometimes brutish Neanderthal husband) fidgets in an oversized seat of plush velvet as metal-horned, breast-plated Wagnerian heroines screech unbearably in German. For the boy, the opera is long, boring and utterly meaningless...
...like Batman, this comic-book movie is anything but comic; every plangent chord of Danny Elfman's splendid pop-Wagnerian score underlines the scientist's twisted nobility. Raimi isn't effective with his actors, and the dialogue lacks smart menace, but his canny visual sense carries many a scene. And he knows how to give resonance to a tinny plot: by portraying a character so powerful and warped that he is urban America's perfect patron saint...
Jury selection for her trial on racketeering and other charges carrying up to 50 years in prison started last week in the same courtroom that saw the bravura performances of Leona Helmsley and Bess Myerson. For sheer Wagnerian greed, the tale of Imelda could put the Hotel Queen to shame. Jurors will have to decide whether a wife always knows what her husband is up to -- in this case, deposed President Ferdinand Marcos, who died last September. "The Marcoses were masters of deception," said prosecutors. "They elevated three- card monte ((a form of shell game)) to an art form." Scoffed...
...begin with, Princess Ida is not one of Gilbert and Sullivan's better efforts. Centered around Ida's decision to spurn men and found a women's university, the script is too long, and the main characters are unlikable. The score, which Sullivan used to indulge his Wagnerian pretenses, lacks any memorable tunes. Gilbert and Sulivan devotees won't be completely disappointed, though, because Princess Ida contains all of the elements the pair is famous for. Patter songs, topical jokes and absurd characters abound, and the part undergraduate, part professional cast makes the most of what they are given...
...ambitions were Wagnerian. Gauguin thought in terms of large didactic and decorative cycles. He dreamed of making a "total" work of art subsuming architecture, painting and sculpture -- hence the "Studio of the South Seas" that he set up in rue Vercingetorix in Paris after he got back from his first Pacific sojourn in 1893, and the "House of Pleasure," with its lewd carvings and mottoes, that he built in the Marquesas. Tahitian myth was as literal a gift from the gods to him as Valhalla had been to Wagner. Gauguin was no anthropologist but a romantic looking for pity...