Word: wagnerian
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...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...
...work of Kline's contemporaries--especially, in the '40s, De Kooning, whose influence on Kline was pervasive. A case can be made for Wotan as Kline's masterpiece; that extraordinarily forthright black rectangle, with a stub of the top "girder" sticking out to the right, is an image whose Wagnerian power fits its title. Majestic and a little slangy at the same time, it is one of the most commanding American paintings...
...longer think of myself as some mythical Wagnerian tree with a divine right to a noble purpose in my life. We are all leaves on a tree that grows without reason. And this tree cares nothing for the goals and aspirations of its individual leaves. Our only dignity comes from those leaves around us, the individual leaves who knew us well...