Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Died. Wieland Wagner, 49, grandson of Composer Richard and avantgarde opera designer; of sarcoidosis; in Munich. "I was born in a mausoleum," Wieland once said, referring to Bayreuth, where Grossvater Wagner had built his own shrine, and he lost not a moment in "clearing 80 years of Kitsch off the stage" when he was made co-director of the family-run Bayreuth Festival in 1951. He began by throwing out all the traditional trappings-animal skins, horned helmets, swan boats and ponderous sets-replacing them with simple robes and stark, dimly lit slabs designed to evoke modern psychological drama...
...speaks for itself: 50 new productions, three U.S. premieres (Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress, Strauss's Arabella, Menotti's The Last Savage), and one world premiere (Barber's Vanessa). His own taste favors Italian opera; he is only lukewarm about Wagner and, with a few exceptions, indifferent to modern. Compared with Milan's La Scala or West Berlin's opera, whose repertories are laced with contemporary works, the Met, as one critic puts it, "remains a coach-and-four in a jet age." Bing has no desire to stand in the spotlight...
...WAGNER: LOHENGRIN (5 LPs; RCA Victor). An ambitious production by Erich Leinsdorf and the Boston Symphony that is only partially successful. Leinsdorf manages crowd scenes like a musical DeMille, so that sequences like the gathering of the clans in the second act are wonderfully exciting. In the title role, Sandor Konya conveys a gentle, human Lohengrin, and William Dooley makes a rich-voiced, menacing Telramund. But the female roles-usually easier to fill-are not nearly so satisfying. Rita Gorr is cruelly miscast as Ortrud, and Lucine Amara's voice is not big enough for the crucial role...
...Wagner's men were there all right-and they were so conscious of the possibility that they might be accused of riot-incited brutality that they maintained a general attitude of scrupulous courtesy-at times almost to the point of being ineffectual. In the daylight hours following the first upheaval, officers rubbed their shotguns and watched placidly while leisurely looters emptied the shelves of riot-smashed stores. When one tearful shopkeeper begged the cops to stop the thieves from walking away with his livelihood, they shrugged and repeated what Chief Wagner himself had told reporters...
...week went by, the toll of destruction reached millions; four lives had been lost, 46 people injured, and 187 arrested. The cause, Locher and Wagner hinted persistently, lay in an organized conspiracy. Cleveland does have its Black Muslim Temple of Islam (No. 18). There was at least one representative of the pro-Castro Revolutionary Action Movement in town. A group called the J.F.K. House-for Jomo Freedom Kenyatta and John F. Kennedy-is suspected of running a Hough-headquartered training school in street warfare...