Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...London's Covent Garden Royal Opera House, Swedish Soprano Birgit Nilsson wowed almost everyone-critics and public alike-with her passionate singing of Brünnhilde in Wagner's Die Walküre. But one listener was unimpressed-Critic Peter Branscombe of London's Financial Times, which takes a passing interest in music. Pronounced Branscombe: "She is not yet the perfect Brünnhilde, but her sense of the stage is deepening." That one sour note was enough for Birgit to conclude that London is a town with rocks in its head. Cried she caustically: "I will...
There seems to be no easier method of praising an aspect of the "enemy" culture than to note that the book, play, or symphony under discussion is "above politics." And thus we have heard that the artistry of Wagner, Furtwangler, Prokofiev, or Shostakovich is above politics, even though we know how deeply the work of these men was influenced by their political environments...
...native New Yorker, the commissioner might have known that such casual talk would not pass unchallenged. The New York Board of Rabbis issued an angry statement. Mayor Wagner called the commissioner on the carpet, demanded an apology within 48 hours and announced angrily: "He's the police commissioner and I'm the mayor, and everybody in the city had better understand that...
Stiff-necked Steve Kennedy, who once refused police files to a Wagner-approved TV scriptwriter and made it stick, refused to issue a formal apology. He would only declare that his remarks had been misinterpreted, that "no slur on the religious sincerity of anyone was intended." that if he was as anti-Semitic as Bob Wagner was apparently suggesting, mere apology would not suffice anyway. A reticent man, Commissioner Kennedy refrained from making any sympathetic play of the fact that Mrs. Kennedy is Jewish...
Newspapers rallied to the commissioner, forgave him his transgression for being overtired, and left hapless Bob Wagner with his ultimatum running out. At the last minute, former Senator Herbert H. Lehman, a fellow Democrat and patriarch of New York Jewry, offered a solution. He praised Commissioner Kennedy as a man of integrity, courage and high character. The whole controversy, he said, had been exaggerated out of all reason. Well, said "I'm-the-Mayor" Wagner after a conference, it's up to the Board of Rabbis: "They asked for an apology." And everybody in the city understood that...