Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that had killed Isolde on a hundred nights at the opera. The great Wagnerian voice had risen, had touched all the heroic notes, had softened, had faded, had died. For 20 years she was the world's greatest soprano and for nearly 40 it was hard to imagine Wagner without her. Then, last week, at 67, after a bedridden year, Kirsten Flagstad died...
...grown into immense power and clarity, perfectly even throughout its great range. She had grown with it, and when, as Isolde, she embraced Lauritz Melchior's Tristan, 400 pounds of lovebird sang from the stage. But together they were 400 pounds of genius, too, and after them Wagner could never again be the same...
...banging out a succession of grinding dissonances as he attempted to imitate the sound of buses rumbling over the cobblestones of the Faubourg Poissoniere. But more important than the technique was the reticence that he restored to concert halls long accustomed to the thunders and tempests of Beethoven and Wagner. No composer spoke with more intense feeling than Debussy-or in a quieter voice...
Although he felt the pull to Wagner and made ritualistic pilgrimages to Bayreuth, Debussy could not accept ever Wagner without a sneer. Commenting on the characters in Parsifal, he called Amfortas "that melancholy knight of the Grail, who whines like a shopgirl and whimpers like a baby." Yet traces of the Wagnerian influence remained. "But that's the whole of Parsifal,'' muttered Richard Strauss after hearing a particular passage from Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande...
After the intermission, however, Mme. Crespin seemed much more in the recital vein, and in a Faure and Debussy group she made her musical and dramatic points less through sheer impressiveness of voice than by a happy talent for shading and nuance. An eloquent performance of three of Wagner's Wesendonkleder explained in part Mme. Crespin's great success at Bayreuth; opera audiences must have responded as well to the unmistakable aura of the Grand Manner which hovers about her. In this age of slenderized divas, Mme. Crespin remains a satisfyingly ample woman, and on Thursday night she managed with...