Word: wagnerism
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...late preconvention season of 1956, two Catholics-Massachusetts Senator John Kennedy and New York Mayor Robert Wagner-rank high among Democratic vice-presidential possibilities. One reason: a confidential survey now in the hands of selected Democratic leaders, e.-g., Harriman Adviser Carmine De Sapio and Stevenson Campaign Manager James Finnegan (both Catholics). The survey's fundamental thesis: Democratic presidential chances in November may well depend upon getting a Catholic on the national ticket...
...clear the air, Wieland Wagner called in newsmen and offered his explanation. "This is the first time," he said, "that Die Meistersinger has not been done as a cliche. This opera is a wish dream of my grandfather, a revolutionary who failed.* It's actually a monologue-a discourse between himself as Hans Sachs and as Walther von Stolzing-the Wagner of maturity and youth. Musically, it's between Bach and Handel, and between Debussy and modern jazz. The real meaning of Meistersinger is Sachs' lament: 'Fools, fools, all of them fools.' The young growing...
Hisses and boos mingled with cheers as Richard Wagner's grandsons rang up the curtain last week on the sixth postwar season at Bayreuth. Reason for the excitement: Wieland and Wolfgang Wagner had finally got around to applying to Die Meistersinger the same stripped-down, dramatically lighted staging in which they have redraped all but one (Rienzi) of their Grandfather Richard's works...
...Wagnerians, the looming, medieval sets of Die Meistersinger have long seemed almost as sacrosanct as the music itself. Of all Wagner's operas, Die Meistersinger was the one deemed least adaptable to modern staging. But, for better or worse, Designer Wieland Wagner decided to refute the purists. Wieland only slightly distorted the interior of St. Catherine's Church in Act I. But the medieval Nuremberg of Act II was not only "dema-terialized," as traditionalists feared; it was totally atomized. There was not a trace of the famed gingerbread houses...
Wieland's mother Winifred complained: The daughter-in-law of Richard Wagner, who herself directed at Bayreuth in Hitler's time and is now barred from the festival as an ex-Nazi, said of her son: "He's such a gifted boy and knows so much about opera. It's a pity he couldn't produce some other operas and leave his grandfather's alone...