Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...preceding the Ninth not to sound like a curtain-raiser: Everybody comes to hear what follows, but has to sit through the opening number anyway. Since Leinsdorf decided to preface the Ninth with something, Siegfried Idyll was a good choice. Unfortunately for those, like myself, for whom it is Wagner's only approachable composition, Leinsdorf's treatment of it was disappointing...
...first place, there were too many strings. Richard Wagner composed this charming piece for his wife and played it from the stairway on the morning of her birthday. He scored it for what even the program notes call a small orchestra: flute, oboe, 2 clarinets, bassoon, trumpet, 2 horns, and strings. If you can imagine the entire string section of the BSO standing on Mrs. Wagner's steps, you will get some idea of how Tuesday's performance sounded. No one loves the depth and richness of a large subdued string section better than I do; but the winds sounded...
...side said yes, the other side would have surely said no-hopeful that by further bargaining it might gain something beyond Kheel's suggested compromises. Once they had recorded their unwillingness to give way any more, though, both the weary antagonists were quick to accede to Mayor Robert Wagner's suggestion that they change their minds, agree with Kheel, and go back to work. At week's end, all that remained to be done was for the Times's Guildsmen to meet and formally ratify the proposals...
...telling complaint about opera has to do with poor acting and staging. Mark Twain wrote that "there isn't often anything in a Wagner opera that one could call by such a violent name as acting. As a rule, all you would see would be a couple of people, one of them standing still, the other catching flies." And Critic Ernest Newman said of the typical soprano: "She looks like an ox; she moves like a cart horse; she stands like a haystack...
...none of this proves that opera is finished. New works are almost never quickly accepted-even Carmen flopped at first. Singers complained that they couldn't sing Wagner (some still do, and can't), and again and again the end of opera was proclaimed. To many, the most recent "end" came with Richard Strauss, who died in 1949. When Alban Berg's magnificent Wozzek was first performed in 1925, some people covered their ears in horror; today it is widely accepted as an almost mellow classic. Julius Rudel, director of Manhattan's enterprising New York City...