Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...York City's 2,378,000 registered Democrats, only three, as of last weekend, had officially declared themselves as candidates to succeed retiring Mayor Robert Wagner. Of these, only one could be considered a truly serious possibility: City Council President Paul R. (for Rogers) Screvane, 50, a professional public servant who knows the city right down to the bottom of its garbage cans...
...culturist, enjoys performing deep knee-bends while standing on one foot. He left school after one year, became a city garbage-truck driver at $30 a week. He worked his way up to the $25,000-a-year job of sanitation commissioner. It was from that post that Bob Wagner, in 1961, appointed him deputy mayor, then picked him as a running mate. In New York, the city council president is something like a vice president. What Wagner mainly wanted was a No. 2 man who would take on some of the unpleasant chores that the mayor himself was either...
Doting Benefactor. Wagner had other troubles. A republican revolutionary, he was forced to flee Germany in 1849 and was subsequently hounded across Europe by a pack of creditors. His deliverance came in 1864-seven years after he had started work on Tristan-when Ludwig II was crowned king of Bavaria. An effeminate, blue-eyed, ethereally handsome lad who was Wagner's most ardent admirer, Ludwig, then 18, dispatched an emissary to track down his idol, finally discovered the composer holed up in an attic room of a hotel in Stuttgart...
...Wagner was presented with the king's priceless signet ring and a promise of a lavish première of Tristan in Munich. In addition, the king promised Wagner all the money he needed, a new theater, a new music school and a new home. Ludwig also bombarded the 51-year-old composer with tender letters vowing eternal devotion. Wagner, a short, haggard-faced man, was careful not to alienate his doting benefactor, but he had other irons in the fire. Immediately on his arrival in Munich he asked that his close friend, Conductor Hans...
...Artillery. When, at last, Tristan had its debut, the audience unexpectedly gave it a thunderous ovation, and Ludwig wrote in his diary: "Wagner, thou only one, holy one. How delightful. Oh, how complete." Then, suddenly Wagner's affair with Cosima was exposed. In a jealous rage, Ludwig banished the composer from the capital...