Word: wagnerian
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...begin with, Princess Ida is not one of Gilbert and Sullivan's better efforts. Centered around Ida's decision to spurn men and found a women's university, the script is too long, and the main characters are unlikable. The score, which Sullivan used to indulge his Wagnerian pretenses, lacks any memorable tunes. Gilbert and Sulivan devotees won't be completely disappointed, though, because Princess Ida contains all of the elements the pair is famous for. Patter songs, topical jokes and absurd characters abound, and the part undergraduate, part professional cast makes the most of what they are given...
...ambitions were Wagnerian. Gauguin thought in terms of large didactic and decorative cycles. He dreamed of making a "total" work of art subsuming architecture, painting and sculpture -- hence the "Studio of the South Seas" that he set up in rue Vercingetorix in Paris after he got back from his first Pacific sojourn in 1893, and the "House of Pleasure," with its lewd carvings and mottoes, that he built in the Marquesas. Tahitian myth was as literal a gift from the gods to him as Valhalla had been to Wagner. Gauguin was no anthropologist but a romantic looking for pity...
...Unknown is his tenth novel, and his command of caustic social comedy seems complete. He is pitiless in describing the cliches of adultery so eagerly embraced by his lovers -- Simon's nattering about whether his many "meaningless" affairs have rendered him unfit for nobler passion, Monica's inflating to Wagnerian grandeur her demand that he leave his wife. Meanwhile, domesticity grinds on relentlessly, and it is the urgent and unpredictable demands of his large, eccentric family that finally defeat Simon...
Although Rosenthal's tempos tend toward the inflexible, sometimes leaving sluggish singers to catch up as best they can, he never swamps them in Wagnerian sound. Clean and elegant, Rosenthal's interpretation reflects an approach one does not usually associate with Wagner. "Some people will be surprised," he says, "but the Ring is lots of fun." In a production that compels rethinking Wagner's monument, the casting of Rosenthal is the most daring element...
...other words, Boulez is a pragmatist. At the Philharmonic, he gradually broadened his repertoire to include a variety of musical styles; in opera the would-be dynamiter turned out to be an effective Wagnerian. At his brainchild, IRCAM, Boulez's fellow composers have great stylistic latitude. "I cannot make my personal taste the main criterion," he says. "I am more tolerant than my reputation...