Word: wagnerism
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...France's Claude Debussy, Germany's Richard Wagner was "that old poisoner" of the pure wells of music. In the 1890's, fuming at the "grandiloquent hysteria" of the Wagnerian heroes-and calling his predecessor "a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn"-Debussy, singlehanded, set about creating a new anti-Wagnerian style. The result was the only opera he ever finished, Pelléas et Mélisande. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, it had a shadowy, once-upon-a-time plot that actually bore a genteel resemblance to Wagner's Tristan...
Debussy's singers have no arias-they sing as naturally as if speaking-while the orchestra sweeps along in the major role. Unlike Wagner's characters, Debussy's do not bemoan their fates; they simply submit to them. Nor is there any Wagnerian bellowing. Where Tristan shouts "Isolde! Geliebte!" at the top of his lungs, with the orchestra going full out, Pelléas whispers "Je t'aime...
With opening night safely under its belt, the company settled down to its annual routine. During the season it will present 22 operas from its repertory, eight of them new Bing stagings of recent seasons. Two more-Rossini's Barber of Seville and Wagner's Tannhdüser-will get completely new productions this winter, while five others will get a cut-rate (about $10,000 apiece) reconditioning...
Medieval Ireland and Cornwall (The Enchanted Cup, by Dorothy James Roberts; Appleton-Century-Crofts). A tearful new version of the old Tristram-Isolde love story which in no way improves on the previous versions of Sir Thomas Malory, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Edwin Arlington Robinson and Richard Wagner...
Contrary to widespread fable, the Taft-Hartley Act was drafted to protect labor as well as to correct some of the abuses unions were permitted under the Wagner act. In one respect, however, the laws makes the same omission in protection as its predecessor: it contains no effective provision to deal with an employer who breaks the law while fighting attempts of a union to organize his factory. Since an unfair practices suit requires at least a year to settle, an obstructionist employer can easily stave off union organization with delays. Even should the union ultimately win its suit against...