Word: wagnerism
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...patrons were busy proving their devotion. In what other major American city would the mayor set aside a big chunk of downtown (Union Square) and invite 10,000 for a musicale? Where else would Jesus Freaks mingle with bankers and hard hats to watch Fafner the Dragon chase Wagner's Rhinemaidens and the clowns from I Pagliacci on specially constructed mini-stages? Who else but Adler could persuade Prima Donna Joan Sutherland to brave both the crowd and the city's infamous outdoor air-conditioning and sing Ah fors' è lui and Sempre libera from Verdi...
...McGovern's visit to Providence, some 4,000 highly enthusiastic residents jammed Westminster Mall, especially cheering his attacks on the continuing war. In New York, McGovern held a press conference to announce that former Mayor Robert Wagner would be his state campaign chairman. Amid all the activity, he wrote Nixon that he would not personally take up the President's offer of foreign policy briefings, but designated as his stand-in Adviser Paul Warnke, who served as an Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Johnson Administration...
...Wagner, a musical and political revolutionary who liked nothing better than a good row, would probably have loved it. Whether he would have loved what Bayreuth did to his Tannhäuser, the cause of all the furor, is another matter. Director Götz Friedrich managed to turn a tale of a man caught between the forces of spirituality and sensuality into a pointed parable of Fascism defeated by Socialism...
LEFT-WING TANNHÄUSER'S FALL, ran the headline in Süddeutsche Zeitung next day. "The Bavarian minister-president vowed to cut off all further subsidies to Bayreuth if any more Communist propaganda is ever attempted," fumed Wolfgang Wagner, the politically neutral director of the festival and grandson of the composer: "Is this democratic freedom?* Haven't there been boos in Bayreuth before...
...cause either boos or bravos in Bayreuth. The "new Bayreuth style," fostered by Wolfgang's elder brother Wieland, substituted psychodrama for realism. Since Wieland's death in 1966, the style has remained but the spark has gone. Friedrich has changed all that. "A genius like Richard Wagner," he says, "inevitably provides room for a whole complex of often contradictory interpretations." There was nothing contradictory about the box office results after the news of his scandalous Tannhäuser. Gossip about Bayreuth's impending demise stopped, the Bavarian ministry denied it had ever thought of cutting off subsidies...