Word: wagnerism
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Last year, after New York's Mayor Robert Wagner won re-election on a beat-the-bosses platform, it was generally assumed that Wagner would take over as the state's Democratic boss-and be persuaded to run against Rocky. But Wagner hardly has the temperament of a boss; and he soon made it plain that he wanted no part of Rocky this year. The result: a vacuum of leadership within the New York Democratic Party...
...time Wagner's fears seemed justified: at a turn-of-the-century Tristan performance the orchestra poured out music of such passionate urgency that one panting English critic found that he was "no longer artistically and morally a responsible being." The surging erotic melodies of the second act's Liebesnacht moved strong men to tears, and young girls swooned in the aisles...
Today, the tale of Tristan's illicit love affair with Isolde, bride of his uncle, King Marke, and of the lovers deaths-Tristan from a dueling wound and Isolde from grief-no longer packs the emotional wallop it had for Wagner's generation. Indifferently played, the familiar music sometimes has an almost soporific effect. But at the Bayreuth Festival last week, audiences responded to a stunning new Tristan und Isolde that gave Wagner's paean to love some of the shock value it must have had when its composer trembled for his hearers' sanity...
Looming Symbol. The composer's grandson, Wieland Wagner, had staged a new Tristan at Bayreuth in 1952, and Brother Wolfgang tried his hand at it in 1957, but neither version satisfied Wieland. As he planned the opera in this year's production, it became "yet another aspect of the ancient Oedipus drama, with its eternal correlation between Love and Hate, Death and Eternity, Father and Son." The most startling changes in Wieland's Tristan: 1) Isolde does not die at the final curtain, and 2) King Marke strangely becomes Tristan's father instead of his uncle...
Death & Transfiguration. How did Wieland justify his changes? "If you read the original score," says he, "you will see that Richard Wagner never mentions Isolde's death, but always speaks about her Verärung (transfiguration). Death for Richard Wagner was never mere loss of life...