Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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WORLD PREMIERE (NBC, 9-11 p.m.). Another in the series of full-length movies released first on TV. How I Spent My Summer Vacation, with Robert Wagner, Peter Lawford, Lola Albright. Walter Pidgeon and Jill St. John...
...awaiting inspection; principal singers stirred hardly at all, and when they did, it was with the slow, deliberate movements of dream figures. The audience loved it, loudly bravoed Conductor Karl Böhm and Mezzo-Soprano Christa Ludwig. But the real star of the evening was not there: Richard Wagner's grandson Wieland...
Lohengrin was intended to be the vehicle for Wieland Wagner's long-awaited U.S. debut, but when he died three months ago at 49, his production was entrusted to his assistant, Peter Lehmann. Still, symbolically, Wieland was there. And fittingly so, for symbolism was his stock in trade. Lohengrin was garbed in heroic gold, Elsa in innocent white, Telramund in malevolent black, Ortrud in sinister green. In the background were painted stylized designs of a madonna, a dove and a swan. The swan, unfortunately, looked more like a Boeing 707, but, said Lehmann, "I wouldn't dare change...
Though Wieland's treatment may not have pleased everyone, there was no disputing that his influence will be felt in future Met productions; he buried once and for all the heavy-handed theatrics that characterized traditional Wagnerian productions. "All Wagner literature written before 1950 should be burned," he once said, "together with the old Wagnerians. For living theater, there can only be one style-that of its own period...
...Ring cycle, Valhalla would be Wall Street, the heroes Siegfried and Siegmund self-sacrificing astronauts, the temptress Gutrune a mythological call girl, the god Wotan a wheeler-dealer politician, his wife Fricka everybody's nagging mother-in-law, and the spear-carrying Valkyries teen-age Beatle fans. Richard Wagner would have adored it, insisted Wieland. After all, no one despised the old Wagnerite purists more than Grandfather, who delighted in shocking admiring visitors by greeting them at the door on all fours and yapping like a fox terrier...