Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...many Britons, the almost instinctive hostility to the House of Mountbatten goes back to the anti-German feeling of World War I, when Wagner's music was banned from the Albert Hall and to have a German name could mean getting the sack. Most prominent victim of the anti-German feeling of the day was no less a personage than Britain's German-born First Sea Lord, Prince Louis Alexander of Battenberg, who had been a British subject for 46 years...
...Wagnerian hero, a tenor should 1) have a voice big enough and resonant enough to soar over the timpani-tempered Wagnerian orchestra, 2) be robust enough to support swooning Wagnerian sopranos, and 3) preferably be named Lauritz Melchior. At the Metropolitan Opera last week, a topnotch revival of Wagner's Die Walkuere (conducted by Karl Boehm) offered the audience a dramatic tenor who ideally fulfilled the first two requirements and made the third one seem unimportant. The tenor: 33-year-old, Canadian-born Jon Vickers...
Tristan: Later. Vickers has other ideas: he does not covet the role of Heldentenor. "I have no intention," says he, "of becoming a Wagner specialist. I love Wagner, but I want to sing for 25 years, not ten years. I want to keep my Italian roles, because Italian caresses the voice while German exploits it." Moreover, Vickers refuses to jump into the role of Tristan, as his public and press have urged him to. No dramatic tenor, he reasons, really reaches vocal maturity until he is 38 or 39, and for a part as taxing as Tristan, it takes...
...York City's most eminent senior citizens, Vienna-born Violinist Fritz Kreisler, proudly made his way to city hall, where on his 85th birthday he got a civic scroll for "distinguished and exceptional service" from Mayor Robert F. Wagner. Aside from composing such popular tunes as Romance and Caprice Viennois, Virtuoso Kreisler also "ghostwrote" a series of compositions that he ascribed to 17th and 18th century masters; years later he confessed that he had done so because "I found it inexpedient and tactless to repeat my name endlessly on the programs." During the city hall ceremony Kreisler, who played...
...hour whirlwind, he shook the hands of all Democratic factotums and factions, talked tactical politics with New York State Chairman Michael Prendergast and Tammany Chief Carmine De Sapio. He rubbed shoulders with Negro and white officials in a reception thrown by New York's Mayor Wagner, made a speech to the largest Roman Catholic men's club in Brooklyn, conferred with wealthy Wall Streeters, and in total, stomped a path that would have done credit to Jeb Stuart...