Word: wagnerism
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...guest was a pollster who had just completed a postcard survey, ordered by De Sapio, as to the presidential preferences of Democratic voters in New York state. De Sapio places great stock in his polls, used them to confirm his choices of Robert Wagner (over Vincent Impellitteri) for mayor of New York City in 1953, and of Harriman (over Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr.) for governor in 1954. Says De Sapio: "You can't impose your will on the people any more. If they select the candidate in a poll, they'll elect him." De Sapio's surveys...
...critics are remembered at all by posterity, it is usually for having been notably wrong in their judgments. A case in point: Eduard Hanslick (1825-1904), 19th century Europe's most renowned and most recalcitrant critic, who for 40 years mercilessly shredded Wagnerian operas, won painful immortality when Wagner wrote him into Meistersinger as the waspish Beckmesser. But perhaps the most remarkable music critic of all time, a man who later made his mark in wider literary fields, was George Bernard Shaw. A new selection from his weekly criticisms for London's The Star and The World (Shaw...
...capable of becoming a great singer." Battle Lines. Shaw's criticisms are, almost to a word, a joy to read, even when the personalities are beyond memory. One reason: musical battle lines were clearly drawn in Shaw's day. He could be simply for or against Wagner (he was for) and romantic Italian opera (against, at least until Verdi's later works); musical forms were firm, and a chord was a chord. It made things easier for him than for today's critic, who has precious little new music to discuss, less that is controversial...
Bayreuth's Wagner. By comparison with Salzburg's blaze, Bayreuth was authoritative but monochromatic. The latest style for Wagnerian opera, as set by the composer's grandsons Wieland and Wolf gang Wagner (TIME, Aug. 13, 1951, et seq. features a stage in semidarkness, moonlit landscapes, symmetrical crowd scenes and stark emphasis on the polarities of heaven and earth, man and woman, light and darkness, life and death. With their productions of all of Wagner's major works unveiled in previous seasons, the producers this time tried their hand at the youthful but never completely successful Flying...
Unheeded Pleas. The Rev. Paul Wagner Roth, 77-year-old committee chairman, pleaded with Crist: "We all would be most happy if you could make the supreme sacrifice of your intellectual doubts and differences as a bearer of the Cross and a follower of Christ...