Word: wagnerian
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...studying with one of the great American furniture makers, James Krenov.) Sometimes his pieces resemble hybrids of basketry and cooperage. A beautiful example is Brunhilde, 1998-2000, an open-form cage of intricately fitted cedar slats, a mysterious baglike structure that seems to inflate with breath--like a Wagnerian soprano, says Puryear, filling her lungs for the big aria. And then there are the purely organic forms, which derive from nests, seedpods, flower stems, birds' bones or marine protozoa. An example is his big red-cedar-and-pine piece, Plenty's Boast, 1994-95. As the title suggests, it could...
...Boris to admire Barbara even as she took him apart also enables him to see that his career created an entity beyond himself - a creature of fame named Boris Becker - that threatens to trap him in a life of fraudulence. He can't decide if his life is a Wagnerian opera or a Beckett farce, so he takes himself too seriously and pokes fun at himself, often at the same time. He recently finished shooting a movie in Germany, playing himself. "Yeah, myself," he says. "Whatever Boris I'm supposed to be that...
...setting is once again Leechfield, Karr's fictionally named but vividly evoked hometown in East Texas, about a 30-minute drive from the Gulf of Mexico: "Distant refinery flames flapped against the apricot sky." Karr's parents, whose Wagnerian domestic travails thundered so consistently throughout The Liars' Club, have receded to the background of this book as she tries to find her own way in the world. That fadeaway is understandable but still a shame, since Pete and Charlie Karr seem interestingly unique, and teenage anxieties...
...contrast between Kiefer and Polke couldn't be sharper, of course. Kiefer (whose drawings were recently shown at New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art) is oratorical, Wagnerian; he is a flat-out mythomane, dedicated to the Sublime, the Enormous and the Ultra-German; a marvelous artist at his best and at his worst a Black Forest ham. Polke is thinner, weirder and more elusive. His work--whose basic nature developed during the period covered by this show, from 1963 to 1974--is a hard-to-read image haze formed by the overlay of Pop art on Germany...
...Wagnerian heldentenors have rarely stirred the hearts of more than a minority of opera buffs, though, which is where Jose Cura and Marcelo Alvarez come in. Alvarez, 36, is a light lyric tenor whose high notes are fresh sounding and secure; Cura, 36, is a weightier lirico-spinto with an impressive touch of baritonal muscle. Alvarez made his Met debut last month in Franco Zeffirelli's bloated new production of La Traviata, in which his engaging singing was overshadowed by the spectacularly vivid Violetta of Patricia Racette. Cura's turn comes with next season's opening night, when he will...