Word: straussed
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...realized," said Richard Strauss of the Meisterwerk of his middle age, "that the opera would never have much success." He was speaking of Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman Without a Shadow), the huge complex of mythology and symbolism that he constructed with Librettist Hugo von Hofmannsthal during World War I. Strauss guessed correctly: since its premiere in Vienna in 1919, the work has rarely been staged in Europe and never in the U.S. Last week Die Frau finally appeared on a U.S. stage in a San Francisco Opera production that made cheering audiences wonder where she had been...
...bring Strauss's vision to the theater, opera designers decked the cast in blazing costumes, filled the stage with striking Daliesque sets. Standouts of a superb cast were California-born Mezzo-Soprano Irene Dalis as a malevolent nurse and German Soprano Marianne Schech as the dyer's wife. Conductor Leopold Ludwig whipped his orchestra through the complex, luxuriant score with a fine sense of surging lyricism, a deft feel for the opera's shadow-flittery moods. "No matter what may happen to the Giants," glowed the Chronicle's Alfred Frankenstein, "San Francisco won the pennant Friday...
...bannered a new charge against der Alte: DR A. JOINS A-BOMB CLUB IN SECRET. Burden of this "scoop" by Herald Air Correspondent Gilbert Carter was that West German money and scientists were helping to build France's Abomb. Outraged, West German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss denounced Carter's story as a phony, invited Carter to inspect West German research centers-and the French-German Ballistics Research Institute in Alsace-to see for himself. For telltale days Carter hesitated; when he finally did accept, it was with the face-saving declaration that the only thing that would...
...State Music Festival, which five years ago pledged itself to new or rarely performed works. In a sprawling tent at Ellenville, N.Y., the festival presented the Eastern premiere of Stravinsky's Canticum Sacrum, the premiere of a ballet by Villa-Lottos, Sibelius' music for The Tempest and Strauss's Elektra, Carl Orff's score for Midsummer Night's Dream. But the festival was dogged by bad luck and bad weather, last summer had to close up shop in midseason. This summer, operating from a new site, it has come back stronger than ever. Last week...
...festival was newly located in an aqua, gold and navy tent (capacity 2,000) near Bear Mountain, only an hour's drive from Manhattan. From season's start the tent was jammed to capacity, and the programs included such stimulating fare as a full-stage production of Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos and a production of Stravinsky's stately Oedipus Rex, conducted by Stokowski. Impresario Forest, who still clips profitable pharmaceutical coupons, thinks that in another summer or so the festival will pay its own way. Meantime, he is angling for a new audience: the passengers...