Word: wagnerism
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...purpose is presumptuous and its battle long because it seeks to overcome our delight in sonority for its own sake, and thereby to thrust upon us the import of precisely what it wants to say. This import strikes us at the moment that we become so imbued with Wagner's musical world that each single utterance--motif, cadence or action--conveys the full magnitude of the drama. In the end singers and orchestra should lose their novelty for us and become vehicles for the expression of Wagner's overarching musical revelation. Music can only touch our lives, he would claim...
What brought about this success most of all was Paul Schoeffler's brilliant handling of Sachs. The continual philosophical note of his lines never strayed into pomposity; a spread-legged geniality did not dissolve into pointlessly effusive gestures or sprawling pitch. The drama discards Wagner's customary alliterations; tense articulation turns melodies into musical prose that Schoeffler controlled with delightful precision and agility. Schoeffler kept Sachs' soliloquys from pretentiousness because his tone had in all registers a cleanness that blended movingly with the orchestra's winds. His very ease and control summed up Wagner's reconciliation of technique and spirit...
...nurse Magdelene. Eunice Alberts sang a delightfully sprightly nurse, but Thomas Hayward (her fumbling lover David) did not give his movements and voice color and conciseness and consistency necessary to a humor ostensibly quaint. So also James Billings as Beckmesser, Walther's rival for Eva, effectively deadened Wagner's critique of professional narrow-mindedness with his ill-controlled buffoonery...
...much for lament. Director Sarah Caldwell saw how much mime matters in this drama; conductor Lazla Halasz perceived the continual recurrence of counterpoint and fashioned a clear texture to exploit the score's intricate dove-tailing of motifs. Meistersinger does not employ Wagner's half-mystical interweaving of words and orchestration. Rather, it makes the orchestra a commentator on the drama's events. This Halasz recognized, and gave the orchestra the subtleties of dynamics and tempo demanded by its place in the opera...
...York, Republicans for the first time since 1955 hold more mayoralty posts than Democrats do, control 50 of 57 county boards, decisively dominate the state legislature. Despite his marital problems, Governor Nelson Rockefeller seems likely to beat any opponent, including New York City's Mayor Robert Wagner...